Last updated 23 September 2026
Ten days, no argument. If Bottleneck is not what you wanted, tell us within ten days of purchase and we will refund it in full. You do not have to justify the decision, and we will not try to talk you out of it. A refund ends the licence, as described below.
There is a free tier precisely so you can see what the software does before paying. If you bought anyway and it did not work out, that is a reasonable outcome and a refund is the right answer.
Either route works:
Refunds go back to the original payment method. Paddle typically completes them within a few business days, though how quickly it appears depends on your bank.
A refund withdraws it. Once the refund is approved, your copy of Bottleneck goes back to the free version the next time it checks for updates, which it does at most once a day while updates are switched on. Your scans and settings stay where they are, and nothing is locked: the free version keeps working.
Continuing to use a refunded key — by keeping the application offline or turning updates off, for example — is a breach of the licence terms. The same applies to a payment you dispute with your bank: a chargeback withdraws the licence too, and it is reinstated if the payment is upheld.
An update plan is a yearly subscription that renews automatically until you cancel. Every payment on it — the first and each yearly renewal — is refundable on the same ten-day terms, counted from the date of that payment. So if a renewal charge catches you out, tell us within ten days and it comes back in full.
Refunding a payment returns your update entitlement to whatever it was before; your underlying perpetual licence is untouched and keeps working. To stop future charges, cancel the plan from your account or email us — a refund on its own does not cancel the plan, so ask for both if you want both.
Separately: if you started a plan and no key arrived, that is not a refund question in the first instance. A plan only issues a key when we can find the licence it extends, which we do from your purchase history. Paying with a different email address from your original purchase, without pasting your existing key at checkout, or choosing a different tier, produces a payment with nothing minted against it. Tell us the order number and we will either issue the correct key or refund you, whichever you prefer.
Write to us anyway. A licence itself is a one-off purchase with no recurring charge; the only thing that charges again is an update plan, and you can cancel that at any time to stop it. If something has genuinely gone wrong we would rather fix it than stand on a date.
Nothing here reduces rights you have by law. If you bought as a consumer in the UK or EU you may have a statutory right to cancel, and rights if the software is faulty or not as described, which apply regardless of this policy. Paddle’s buyer terms also apply to your transaction, and where they are more generous than this page, they win.
Refunds on invoiced Enterprise agreements follow whatever we agreed in writing with you, which will normally differ from this page.